The pervasive current trend in data processing system design is toward utilization of a distributed computing environment wherein an end-user accesses application programs and data over one or more interconnected networks each including multiple interconnected computers. In a typical distributed computing environment, the desktop computers or network computers used by the end-user community, are connected as clients over local area networks (LANs) to a server, which in turn may connect to other such servers locally or remotely. For example, a business enterprise may maintain several interconnected LANs at each of its geographically separate offices. LAN servers at a given office are each interconnected with one another and are further interconnected over wide area networks (WANs) to the servers in the networks of the remote offices.
Businesses have increasingly adopted this computing model in order to allay the cost of operating, maintaining and upgrading separate isolated "piece-part" computing systems. The interconnected networks characterizing this distributed computing model facilitate the prioritization of applications and data, with mission-critical applications and data residing on high-end, high-bandwidth servers, and less important applications and data assigned to correspondingly lower-end servers. In addition, such a highly distributed processing model will typically incorporate features which ensure that the system will continue to function properly and will be continuously available notwithstanding the failure or maintenance of a single or even multiple servers.
Implementation of such a complex, distributed computing model, while offering numerous advantages for its users, presents correspondingly complex network management problems for its network administrators. Heterogeneous operating systems may be implemented in the interconnected networks. Different applications may be running on separate servers as well as different versions or releases of the same application. Failures occurring over localized or distributed portions of the network are not uniformly reported and accordingly corrective actions may be substantially delayed.
In many instances an information technology services (IT) organization either within or outside of the enterprise is charged with the responsibility for managing the distributed computing environment. Typically, a service level agreement (SLA) with such an agency specifies an expected level of application availability and response time for the users of such a network. Adherence to these expected baseline levels is required to fulfill contractual obligations and the failure to achieve these baselines may directly result in the loss of a customer's business. Accordingly, an application monitoring system which provides real-time data regarding application availability and response time would be an invaluable asset to such an organization.
A number of network management tools have been developed to assist the network manager in monitoring the performance of a distributed computing system. For example, the product known as System Performance Monitor/2 available from International Business Machines Corporation (hereinafter "IBM", IBM is the present assignee hereof) provides a graphical interface for depicting the performance of various hardware resources in a processing system, however this product does not indicate the availability and response of a software application to an end-user, and does not permit in depth analysis of the results of the monitoring data. The IBM Netfinity(R) Manager software provides network monitoring of server resources as well as operating system resources at the client level, however it also subsists at the server level and does not monitor client-based access to application programs. Accordingly, it does not provide the IT professional with information needed to assess whether the aforementioned baseline levels, many of which are specified from the perspective of an end-user or client of the network, are being achieved.
A number of passive monitoring systems exist for gathering available data from servers and/or clients in a distributed computing system.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,858,152 to Estes for "Operator Access To Monitoring Applications" (issued Aug. 15, 1989 and assigned to the present assignee) teaches a microcomputer-based monitoring system for concurrently monitoring a plurality of host applications running on a mainframe computer, for summarizing the monitored information and for graphically displaying the information on the display screen of a microcomputer system as well as to provide an alarm mechanism for indicating the attainment of user-defined thresholds. The Multiple System Application Monitor (MSAM) taught by Estes receives existing summarized information from the host machine and reduces the information to an accurate picture of the applications running on the host.
Likewise, the U.S. Pat. No. 5,483,468 to Chen et al. for "System and Method For Concurrent Recording And Displaying Of System Performance Data" (issued Jan. 9, 1996 and assigned to the present assignee) teaches a performance monitoring tool for interactive selection of performance statistics across a network. The tool incorporates a data supplier daemon which runs on a server to store statistical information which is selectively supplied to a data consumer program which in turn negotiates the reporting of the desired statistics. One advantage offered by the Chen et al. patent is that the data consumer program need not include any prior information regarding the statistics maintained by the data supplier daemon. The Chen et al. patent provides a mechanism for capturing system data and recording the data for subsequent play-back.
The aforementioned patents, while offering valuable information to a network manager, do not, by themselves, test application availability or response times, but rather they depend upon data being generated by other parts of the system. In the case of Estes, the information is already available at the host for provision to the microcomputer, and in Chen et al., the system statistical data is captured at the server and provided to the data collector. Thus, in both cases these monitoring tools do not generate relevant client-based availability information and are constrained to collecting and reporting pre-existing information on system performance. If no relevant data on application availability and response time from a client's perspective is previously available for these tools, they will not satisfy the objectives of the data manager.
Several monitoring systems disclose mechanisms for independently generating information indicative of the status of the distributed computing system and collecting and reporting the generated information.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,621,663 to Skagerling for "Method and System For Monitoring A Computer System" (issued April 15, 1997 and assigned to ICL Systems AB) teaches a system for monitoring and changing the operation of a computer network by modifying an application program to include an event report generator which communicates the occurrence of monitored events to an event processing machine in accordance with a flexible rule base in the event processing machine which associates the occurrence of a particular event with a predetermined action. The event report generator is implemented in the application programs running in the system to report on pre-determined events occurring during the execution thereof.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,655,081 to Bonnell et al. for "System For Monitoring And Managing Computer Resources And Applications Across A Distributed Computing Environment Using An Intelligent Autonomous Agent Architecture" (issued Aug. 5, 1997 and assigned to BMC Software, Inc.) teaches a system for managing applications and other server resources wherein an agent is installed in each of the server computers of the network. The installed agents carry out the interrogation functions for identifying which system they reside on, what resources are available and for monitoring aspects of resources and applications present on the server. The agents communicate with manager software systems on the network to enable a continuously updated display depicting all resources and applications present throughout the network and the current state thereof.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,675,798 to Chang for "System And Method For Selectively And Contemporaneously Monitoring Processes In A Multiprocessing Server" (issued Oct. 7, 1997 and assigned to the present assignee) teaches a monitoring system wherein information regarding the status of each client's application program, as it is reflected by a server process, is acquired and made available to the network administrator. The server process monitor program provides information to the network administrator at the granularity level of each client's process within the client-server network.
In each of the foregoing examples, the monitoring system requires an intrusive monitor or probe installed at the server level either in the application program running on the server as in Skagerling, or running on the server in a supervisory mode to collect information form monitored applications running thereon. In either case, the results of the probe are not instructive as to the experience of the client since the information is being generated and gathered on the server side of the network rather than the client side. Moreover, the addition of this monitoring code to servers running in the network creates the same maintenance problems as, and may simply be thought of, as adding yet another application to each of the servers. Furthermore, the execution of these monitoring programs may substantially degrade the performance of their host servers, and in turn the networks that they serve, with the dichotomous result that in the name of efficiently managing the network the very tool being used to achieve that objective creates an inefficient network.
From the foregoing it can be seen that a new application monitoring system which generates availability and response time information or any other desired application program metrics from the perspective of a client would be of great value to a network administrator. The system should be designed to be implemented as a probe at any point within a complex distributed computing environment at which a client computer system may be coupled, and the function of the probe should have negligible impact on the performance of the network. The system should be customizable to provide real time alert signals alerting a recipient of the traversal of user-defined thresholds such as a maximum tolerable response time or minimum availability of a monitored application program.
The monitoring system should provide dynamic reports on, for example, application program availability and response time, which can be tailored by the observer to display in graphical or tabular form the real-time and archived monitoring information relevant to the particular observer. The reports should be displayed in such a manner that the viewer may display either via a graph or table or otherwise data relating to the performance of many servers and/or applications and should provide an interactive facility for enabling the viewer to "drill-down" to view data on specific servers or applications and/or to drill up therefrom to a broader view of the performance data.
The performance report should be readily available to anyone with any type of access to the network and the data therein should reside on a central repository on the network which includes relevant pre-processed statistical information related to the stored data. Access to this information should be provided for persons including the network administrator, help-desk, and end users of the network applications, via wired or wireless connections to the network.
Finally, the system should be easily implemented and maintained so as to serve as an aid rather than a further burden to the network manager.